The Enigma Variations
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: She always leaves. She never says goodbye. She knows recursion like nobody else; she's two hands and a voice and a will. Agent Texas and Project Freelancer, start to finish.
1. Variation I: Elegy

**Theme: Enigma**

When she leaves (and she always leaves), his hand grips hers a little too tightly, and his voice is thin when he says, "Don't go."

Sometimes she hates him for the anchor of her reflection in his eyes. Sometimes, in her frustration and pain, she lets herself think about what happens next, about moving on, always moving, always moving.

She always leaves. She never says goodbye.

* * *

**Variation I: Elegy**

She's awake.

Somebody says, "This isn't possible," in a low, pleased voice, and, "I never imagined," and, "She should only be a fragment. She's more."

I'm more, she thinks, and drifts.

She's awake.

A man is staring at her over his glasses. There's the beginning of gray at his temples, a dusting that makes her feel strange and unsettled. He's looking at her like she's the end of the world.

Another man at his side—the Counselor, her brain supplies—ducks in front of him, smiling apologetically. His voice is quiet, soothing and careful. "Hello. How are you feeling?"

She looks down. She has a hand, encased in black armor. She has two hands. She clenches them into fists. "Confused," she says, because she has a voice, too.

"That's all right. Things are different, now. There's a lot to be confused about. Do you know your name?"

The confusion is starting to give way to something harsher, something that quickens her breathing and starts her heart thrumming in her ears. "I'm not," she starts, and stops to think. She opens her hands once, experimentally, holds them palm-up in a shrug.

Now the first man shoulders past the Counselor, cutting him off before he can speak. "You're Agent Texas," he says, breathlessly. "Allison." The Counselor frowns at his back, but the expression shifts seamlessly to a beatific smile when he catches her watching.

"Allison," she says, but it's the other name that swamps her with vague memories, hot days and warm nights, blurry and sharp-edged by turns. "Tex," she says, and the word grounds her at last, two hands and a voice and a will. "You're the Director. And the Counselor. I remember."

They both flinch away from her; the Counselor recovers first. "What do you remember, Agent Texas?"

She grins, clenches one hand into a fist, slams it against her other palm, rolls her shoulders. "Fighting. I remember fighting."

He smiles back, guarded. "I think we may have a job for you, Agent Texas."

And yes, that's right, that's what she wants, something fast and dangerous and so, so difficult. Something only she can do. The Counselor launches into a description of an oil platform that could benefit from a well-placed set of explosives, the weak points, the operatives whose tracks she'll be covering, twin Agents North and South Dakota, rising star Agent Carolina.

She looks away from the briefing exactly once, sees the bombed-out look on the Director's face, and smiles beneath her helmet, because this is right, this is good.


	2. Variation II: Virtuoso

**Variation II: Virtuoso**

The exhibition fight is pure swagger, the remembered gleam in the Director's eyes eclipsed by Tex's own skyrocketing sense of confidence and pride.

Three opponents: Agent Wyoming, who's focused and frustrated, Agent York, who talks too much, and Agent Maine, who doesn't talk at all except to hiss a sibilant curse each time she ducks a battering-ram arm. It's almost childishly simple to take them out with the pugil sticks, and when they switch to hand-to-hand after a single round, she's delighted to see Wyoming and Maine give in to frustration and make wild, unplanned attacks. York hangs back, makes a valiant attempt at coordinating their advance with a laid-back, defeated air that amuses her. That round goes no better for them; her mind is humming with remembered rhythms (_remembered from where?_) and her breathing is slow and even.

Between two of the lock-down paint drills, while she reloads and restocks and tries not to overhear enough of York's drawling plans to spoil the surprise, she comes to the startling realization that she's starting to like these guys. And that feels wrong—there's a churning in her gut telling her that she's different, that she has to stay apart, that they're not like her. She's not gonna be unwinding with them in the locker room, joking around. And that's... that's right, that's good.

Something aches, and she thinks she remembers.

Then the bullets are flying, real bullets, live rounds someone's snuck in, and there's a surge of fierce joy at the heightened danger, the sparks and dust blazing across her vision, her nerves sharp, her reflexes sharper. The roar of the gunfire seems preternaturally loud, her own weapon too light in her hands. She needs something heavier. Better still, she needs something heavier _and_ a motorcycle. She grins behind her helmet and makes do with what she's got. She always has.

Eventually, York stumbles in beside her, raises his arms defensively. He's still firing paint pellets, she notices. "Hey, I'm trying to help!"

There's real worry in his voice, worry for her, and something burns in the back of her mind, all the shit she's not remembering, everything that's_ almost there_. She snarls at him for abandoning his team, shoves him out of the way of another attack, but the rhythm's gone bad, she's off-balance, and she knows this, she _knows_ this, and a bullet connects with her arm and it goes limp, so she switches stances, flies into something faster, harder, and York staggers in again, persistent, scared, and this time she pulls him into her orbit, smashes him back, and Maine's got a damn _grenade,_ which is easy enough to dodge, a simple side-step and-

The grenade clinks to a stop next to York, still half-crumpled on the ground, dazed, and there's no time there's no time _there's no time_, one arm is still out of commission and all she's got is a damn paint gun.

She uses it, rapid-fire, coating his armor with the hardening paint as best she can. She makes do with what she's got.

The blast echoes in her ears, and York's not talking anymore. She sinks down to her knees, one arm still dangling uselessly, and stares at the floor.

The medics swarm on York, and he groans, and she looks over again to watch the spiderwebbing cracks in his faceplate glinting in the light before he goes still. There's blood on the ground. None of it's hers. Then Carolina's at his side, worry and rage coming off her in waves, and Tex looks away, shrugs off her own medics because there's a little warning screaming at the back of her head telling her, don't let them get too close, don't let them see, don't let them know what you are.

She staggers out of the arena, and for a long while she's stuck in a loop, she's playing the fight over and over in her head, looking for that one moment where failure became inevitable, over and over, down and down into recursion.

The Counselor finds her stumbling through the halls, and his voice is soft and his hands are gentle as he guides her back to the Director.


	3. Variation III: Tinder

**Variation III: Tinder**

There are smaller missions between the big, flashy ones, and she's almost always sent as a secret observer, to clean up after the others, to act as a one-woman fallback plan, to report back to the Director. It makes her twitchy, impatient, to be sidelined without seeing much in the way of action, but she watches the others as best she can, tries to form her own opinions. That seems important, somehow.

She likes South best, the little bundle of frustrated rage and ambition, the loose cannon constantly damped down by her cautious brother. The Director's playing her, of course, the same way he's constantly putting North in a position to draw her ire, her frustration. He's testing them both to the breaking point. And they're both gonna break, no question about it, but Tex suspects North will lose patience before South loses that slow-burning anger. When that happens, she's pretty sure South will come out on top, all the stronger for it. She can respect that.

Now, mere days after York's injury, the twins are on assignment with Washington, the one who went running straight to the Director when Wyoming and Maine smuggled live ammo onto the training field. Tex has never had much love for brown-nosers, especially since, unlike Carolina, Washington doesn't really have the talent to make it worthwhile. But he's young, she thinks. He'll grow out of it. He'll learn.

His first educational experience of the day comes in the form of a tripped alarm while he's trying to access files—York would've been a better choice for this assignment, but she knows the Director's trying to create redundancies in skill sets, and besides, York's still flat on his back.

(It's not like she's joined the herds of well-wishers, teddy bear and flowers in hand, but she did make an effort to show up once, in a rare moment when Carolina was out of the room, to look down on the half-ruined face that seems tense even in sleep and try to control her wheeling thoughts. She didn't tell the Director she'd done it, because for once he didn't need to know.)

Despite the predictable surge of enemy units, Wash manages to coordinate a fairly decent defensive position to cover their retreat, North holding off the enemies at range, South dodging in among the cockier ones. Wash slips up once, though, and his second educational experience is a bullet that makes it past the covering fire and takes him through the shoulder. He stumbles. North notices—of course he notices—and shouts something concerned, moving toward him, and Tex sees the tide shifting as an enemy rifle trains slowly over toward South, the shot now unobstructed without North's cover.

Tex explodes into action, shifting from the shadows to the foreground, and tackles South, brings her down smoothly as the fire opens up overhead, shoves her back as she wobbles into protesting counterattack. And then the rhythm starts up again, a heartbeat in her hands and feet and muscles, and she ducks and dodges forward, spinning into a low kick. She may not have Carolina's knack for using her surroundings against her opponent, she doesn't have South's ability to snatch up any weapon she comes across, but she can _move_, she can do this. Better than anyone. The best.

This is good. This is right.

She hears Wash's voice, too-loud and wobbly in his shock, "What is _she _doing here?" and an answering snarl from South, who moves in to cover Tex's still-weaker right flank. South isn't a polished fighter by any means, but her technique is sound enough that Tex can set up a couple of predictable maneuvers for her to play off, keeping her occupied and out of trouble while Tex moves up, dragging one of the men she'd toppled with her kick into a short-lived role as a human shield. It takes Tex a few moments of this surprisingly effective combat to realize that, right, of _course_ South is used to working as a team, and then there's a weird pang at the thought of that team losing cohesion, tearing itself apart. It's inevitable. That doesn't make it right.

North is yelling that they should fall back, that Wash doesn't look so good, so Tex grabs South by the back of her armor and drags her along behind cover, shoves her toward the extraction point. It's the work of a few minutes to dodge back in and retrieve the last of the data, plant her explosives on a timer and take out the last half-dozen guards.

She checks the chrono on her HUD, pulls up the building's schematics in her head. Her orders are to wait for the last possible moment to rendezvous with her own, more secret extraction, but she has a little time to burn, and there's no way those goons will manage to disable the explosives in time. On a whim, she flicks on her radio, says, "Hey, cancel the extraction, I'll ride with the rest," and cuts it off before the voice on the other end can start to protest.

The others are just boarding the Pelican when she catches up with them; Wash is already slumped in a seat, pieces of punctured and warped armor scattered at his feet while North applies a field bandage to a sluggishly bleeding wound in his shoulder. It's the first time she's seen Wash without a helmet, and he looks sweaty and shaken, but his eyes don't have the glassy stare she knows (_how does she know?_) to be the calling-card of especially dangerous shock. North finishes the bandage and sits back on his heels with his head tilted to one side, inspecting his work. "Practically just a graze," he pronounces, his voice warm and just a little teasing. "Probably won't even need a healing unit."

"Oh, shut up," Wash groans, and rests his head back against the wall as his safety harness comes down.

South, leaning against the back wall, looks up sharply as Tex hops aboard, but she keeps quiet for a long moment, as though searching for words. She finally settles on, "Riding with us mere mortals, huh?" but it comes out weak, and Tex ignores it, taking a seat as far from Washington as possible. Suddenly this whole riding-with-the-rest thing seems like a terrible idea.

It seems like an even worse idea when, halfway through the blessedly silent flight, Wash clears his throat, looking over at her with a painfully uncertain, embarrassed shyness. "Uh," he says. "Thanks, by the way."

Tex can tell the twins are probably holding their breath, waiting for her response. Let them wait. She ignores Wash, ignores them, ignores the whole damn ship, and looks down at her hands, clenching and unclenching into fists in her lap.

When she returns, she leaves the others on their way to the infirmary and reports straight to the Director, who's too-quiet in the way that means he's angry and confused at her actions. He's been too-quiet a lot, lately.

He backs off and lets the Counselor do the talking, calm and rational, explaining that her armor has a cloaking enhancement that she should be able to run effortlessly with the help of an on-board AI, an AI that would be fully integrated with her own neural cortex, and would she be interested in that? Of course she would. Of course.

_Agent Texas, I'd like you to meet Omega. Today is his birthday._

Later, much later, she'll wonder whether Washington was the only one who'd learned something that day.


	4. Variation IV: Spark

**Variation IV: Spark**

At first, Tex adores Omega. He's angry and brilliant and while he really doesn't do much to make her _better_, he makes it feel better when she wins. Fighting's like drinking, for a while, sharp and burning all the way down, warm and heady inside her, a low murmur filling in the silence, whispering along with the ever-present rhythm at the back of her head, _This is good, this is right_.

She steps in, as usual, to cover the other Freelancers' tracks, but York and Carolina and Wash stumble in early, bringing the objective to the rooftop... not to mention a whole shitload of unwanted company. She stares around at them, realizes belatedly that York must have been released from the infirmary at some point. She can't remember why that seemed so important to her, before. Omega hums in her head, and what she does remember is the feeling of his armor buckling beneath her fist, the echoes of it running up and down her arm like lightning.

She waits for her moment, waits until the enemy's distracted by Carolina's camouflage job, and then she cloaks, and then she kills. She does a lot of killing. It feels good. It feels right. Omega is laughing, a deep, contagious belly-laugh, and she grins along with him as the _Mother of Invention_ fires from orbit, as the heat of the blast washes over her. She sprints, grabs a jetpack, and shoves the package off the top of the crumbling building, diving after it, then past it, watching the ground rise up faster and faster.

Behind her and above her, she hears the sound of slow collapse, but it's drowned out by the thrumming of the rhythm in her head. She banks, looks up, watches Carolina, then Wash, try to line up the plummeting package with the carefully maneuvering dropship's open cargo bay doors. They're not gonna make it.

Exasperated, she activates her jetpack full-burst and body-checks the package into the cargo bay just as the dropship has to brake or risk a collision with the ground. Her jetpack sparks and shorts out, and she rolls to her feet, already yelling orders for the pilot who, to her credit, obeys immediately and without question.

Tex's jetpack maneuver apparently slammed Wash into the dropship along with the package, because when she stalks back into the cargo bay he's standing in the corner, rubbing his helmeted head and looking at her funny. "So," he says, conversationally, "That building sure blew up."

Omega thinks about how Wash looked with a bullet in him, and for a moment the image is strange, disturbing, and she feels him backing off, retreating with a mutter to the back of her mind. "Yeah," she says to Wash, grabbing the busted jetpack and turning it over, looking for anything remotely fixable. No dice. "Sure did."

"So," he says again. "Jetpacks, huh?"

She drops the busted jetpack on the ground, takes a running start, and dives out the back of the dropship, grinning all the way down. She'll figure a way out of freefall before she hits bottom. She always has.

Inspiration hits in the form of a rough but passable landing on a conveniently swinging window-washer's platform, and she makes it back to ground level with a series of leaps and bounds, practically humming with excitement. When she calls the _Mother of Invention_, she's nearly certain her voice is shaking, she's so keyed-up, but the Director approves the launch of the ordnance pod, so she can't sound all that bad. Ordnance is what she needs right now.

The pod opens, and she grins at her motorcycle. Yeah. Ordnance.

It's really good to be riding again, really fucking good, and she and Omega laugh with one voice as she follows up on Team A's trackers. Team B, apparently, is down, but North calls in for medical evac and it sounds like they've got things nearly wrapped up there. She's never liked Wyoming much anyway, Omega reminds her, and she cranks up the speed, handily drowning him out with the roar of her engine.

Within seconds, she spots Carolina and Maine—where the hell did Maine come from?—clinging to the back of a jeep while York does some pretty impressive driving for someone with no depth perception. They're surrounded by more of the guys with jetpacks, because _of course they are_, and she skids into the fray with a couple ramps that she'd never have dared to try, before (_before what?_). Now that she's closer, Tex can see that Carolina's on the jeep's turret, and Maine's slumped over, his biometric readings showing critical. Bullet-wound to the chest, large-caliber round. Sniper. Won't be enough to keep him down, she suspects—the guy's gotta be part ox or something. Still. It means Carolina's mostly on her own, and that's not gonna get the job done.

Tex takes down a few pursuers, coming up behind the jeep, and spots the briefcase latched to the back of Maine's armor. Package secured, at least. That should make this part easy. She guns it, but she's limited by the top speed of her bike, her reflexes straining and screaming at her to go faster, _faster_. She watches as Carolina tries to recover the briefcase, fumbles it, retrieves it, leaps to a flatbed truck to take the heat off York and Maine. And then Maine's back in the fight, his punches clumsier than usual but no less lethal.

Tex almost fools herself into thinking Carolina and Maine can handle it, and then one of the guys with the jetpacks shoves a pistol under Maine's chin, firing again and again. Maine crumples, and Carolina yells and throws herself at his assailant like it's not too late, like one moment of inattention isn't all it takes (_and why does that lesson feel so familiar?_). Omega ruthlessly focuses Tex's attention on the blood coating Maine's white armor, but damned if Maine isn't staggering to his feet, firing off one last explosive shot—

The truck bed sways wildly, a couple tires punctured, and collides with another car, sending everyone freewheeling forward; Maine strikes a truck, plummets off the freeway, and Tex snarls and guns her bike again as a jetpacked Insurrectionist snatches the briefcase from the air and tumbles straight into a full retreat, clinging to an ally's Hornet. He's finally within range, so Tex fires a few wild shots, forcing the Hornet to squeeze itself into a tunnel. Pursuit narrowed, focus narrowed. Easy.

She passes into the tunnel, everything amplified, everything echoing, Omega's voice louder and louder and louder in her ears, and she's nearly got this, the hairpin twitches of the handlebars that slam her around trucks and cars, the careful aim—

There's something pale blue in the corner of her eye, something moving faster and faster, dodging across from her, keeping up _on foot_ with their breakneck pace. Carolina. Of course it's fucking Carolina, Carolina who's worked out how to use her armor's equipment in the field, Carolina who wouldn't know how to lose gracefully if her life depended on it. The rivalry bullshit she keeps trying to play on Tex is annoying, confusing, irritating because... because some part of Tex likes the overt challenge, because it's something she can win.

She yells at Carolina to fall back, gets a predictable cocky response, pushes past her as they clear the tunnel, and—there, yes, a ramp, perfectly lined up. Tex feels a moment of regret as she leaps free and lets the motorcycle go, watches it smash the Hornet out of the air, but the damn guy with the jetpack still has the briefcase, and now he's speeding away faster, too fast, and she's got her feet back under her—

Carolina darts past, little more than a blur, hyper-focused, and follows the guy off the freeway with a haphazardly aimed grappling hook. They're out of sight in seconds, and Tex pulls up a map of the area. The jetpack guy's obviously panicked, so he won't be trying anything fancy, and Carolina's a human bullet, straight to target. It's not hard to work out where they're gonna cross the freeway again, and Tex jogs into place, watches the spiraling plumes of destruction off in the distance, along the tops of buildings, growing closer and closer.

Carolina actually catches the guy as they pass over the freeway, but they're still moving too fast, and she doesn't seem to have figured that out yet because she throws a punch that slams them both off balance. Omega drags Tex's attention to the sound of Carolina's armor skidding against the pavement, the rattle as she curls desperately into a ball in the face of an oncoming truck. All of that souped-up momentum finally expends itself in an uncontrolled tumble, and Carolina slides to a stop flat on her face on the pavement.

The briefcase, separated from its owner in the struggle, is also lying on the pavement. Tex bends down, scoops it up, and calls for extraction. The Director praises her on a job well done—as well he should, Omega points out smugly, considering Tex single-handedly completed both teams' objectives. Behind her, Carolina pulls off her helmet and struggles to her feet, one arm clenched in tight against her body, guarding no-doubt broken ribs.

Even before she turns around, Tex knows exactly what expression that must be crossing Carolina's face right now. She knows that loss. She knows that frustration. Omega points out how glad she must be that this time, it's not her feeling it. Omega points out that this time, finally, Tex gets to win.

Omega puts a spring in her step as she drops off the freeway. Omega suggests a song for her to hum on the way home.

Omega helpfully blots out the memory of Carolina's wide, pain-bright, too-familiar eyes.

* * *

**Note: **As a reviewer pointed out, this story is beginning to deviate from canon! I wanted to play with the premise that Omega and Tex really were "something else", that Omega emerged from the Alpha more easily than any of the other fragments (for which they needed the technology stolen during this chapter). Apart from that detail, this story should run relatively close to canon.


	5. Variation V: Segue

**Variation V: Segue**

They've all got some downtime after that. Tex supposes most of the others spend their days in the infirmary, either as patients or as visitors. She doesn't much care; she trains, hour after hour, and when she's not training it's like everything just stops, fades around the edges. She realizes, after a time, that she can't remember sleeping, but her reflexes are sharp and Omega's rumbling is strong in the back of her head, so she must be getting some rest somewhere along the line. She must be.

She does, after all, remember the nightmares.

If her waking moments contain flashes of violence, a remembered crunch of bone or slice of blade, her dreams are a blinding supernova of gore and pain and horror. She doesn't remember sleeping. She doesn't remember waking up, breathing hard. She remembers Omega, and he remembers her.

She's pretty sure she's started hating him. He laughs at that realization, teases her about it, starts daring her to pull him, to sever the AI interface, to just _try_ being on her own again, see if she can cope. He goads her during training—_could you have made that jump without me? could you have steeled yourself for that punch without me?_

During a break in the training session, when her breathing's coming fast and Omega's voice is droning, droning, she reaches back and, before she can think about it for more than a second, she pulls him. The silence is immediate. Tex stares off into the distance and listens to the deafening sound of her own breathing, just her own breathing, just her own. She feels like she's on the cusp of some great discovery. She finishes the session without him, faking aggression and rage she doesn't feel, and the Director nods and dismisses her. For a long time she can't remember what to do next.

She wanders the halls. It's quiet, and she realizes it must be ship's night, most people catching their rack time. The few crew members she does encounter make a point of pretending not to see her, except for the dropship pilot, who offers a cautious nod as she passes. Tex returns it, automatically.

It's inevitable that she eventually stalks up to the infirmary, to Recovery One. Seems like everyone ends up there. For a long while, she stands at the observation window, and all she can see is her own reflection, a hard-edged shape in black and steel, hovering just on the other side of the barrier.

Then she sees past it to the massive shape in the bed—Maine. She feels a weird surge of guilt at having forgotten, at not having asked whether he survived, at not really caring. It has to have been a few days, and it looks like he's still unconscious, his face as grey as the swath of bandages at his throat, preternaturally still. She thinks back to the exhibition fight, to the live ammo he smuggled in, and grins behind her helmet in a weird sort of fondness. She kinda likes the big dummy. She hopes he'll be okay.

She shifts her weight, and only then realizes that there's a shape in the chair beside Maine's sickbed. Wash is, as always, decked out in full armor, but still manages to look small next to his friend. He's slumped in such an incredibly awkward position—legs extended fully, head tilted at a weird angle—that he must be fast asleep. She winces in sympathy; he'll have a hell of a stiff neck in the morning (_and how does she remember that feeling so well?_).

Tex sighs, leans forward to scan the other beds—they're all empty, at least, which means Carolina and Wyoming couldn't have been too badly hurt. And York? She winces at the beginnings of a migraine creeping up the back of her neck. No, York was discharged a while back, he was on the last mission, he was driving the jeep. He was okay. That was right. That was good.

It takes her less than a second to notice that her reflection is twinned, doubled; there's someone else in the room with her. She whirls, already bringing her hands into a defensive stance, but it's only Connie. The kid looks positively tiny in her casual nightclothes, a baggy shirt and loose pants and bare feet, and she's holding a cup of coffee and staring at Tex like she's the monster from some weird-ass bedtime story.

"Whoa," she says. "Wasn't expecting to see you here."

Tex shrugs, turns back to the observation window. "Just wanted to see how things were going. Haven't made it up to check."

Connie smiles nervously. "Uh," she says, and drops into a chair with a would-be casual air that's spoiled by a faint tremor in the hand holding the coffee cup. "Yeah. We kind of noticed. Couldn't sleep?"

Tex thinks about that for a second. "Yeah," she decides. "Couldn't sleep. You too?"

The smile on Connie's face transmutes into something a little more wry, self-deprecating. "Just wanted to check in on him. He's always checking in on me."

Somehow Tex doesn't think she's talking about Maine, but this conversation is getting into seriously awkward territory, even by her standards, so she pretends to misunderstand. "How's Maine doing? He looked pretty bad in the field."

Connie runs a hand back through her messy hair, like she's putting on a helmet or a mask. Her voice gets a little less sleepy, a little more self-consciously tough. "Well, I mean, his throat was basically shot to hell. That fucking sucks for him. They don't think he's ever gonna speak again. The sniper shot messed up his lung as well. And I've seen Carolina looking at him, you know, like she blames herself? I dunno what that's all about." She stares down at Maine and Wash contemplatively, then shrugs. "Docs say he'll live. Probably."

"I'm glad," Tex says, without thinking.

"You really are," Connie says, wonderingly. Her gaze is flicking across Tex's helmet like she's looking for something, but after a moment she just shakes her head and stares down at her cooling coffee. "Uh. Congrats on hitting top of the leaderboard, I guess."

"What?"

Connie glances up sharply. "Seriously? You didn't notice? Carolina's been having a fit."

Tex is weirdly pleased, and can't quite hide the grin in her voice. "Yeah, I'll bet."

They stay like that for a while, Tex staring into the recovery room, Connie looking down at her coffee, in perfect silence. Then Connie clears her throat, meets Tex's gaze squarely, opens her mouth—

And closes it as the echo of footsteps in the hall draws nearer. Tex jumps, glances at her HUD's chrono—almost an hour's passed. She'll be missed. "I better go," she says, and moves for the door.

Just as she reaches it, Connie raises her voice. "Hey, uh. Tex? Watch yourself out there. Just- just be careful." She exhales shakily, and adds, "Some of us are pulling for you. Okay?"

Tex freezes at the door, and the burning of the migraine at the back of her head seems to shift into something ice-cold, screaming down her spine. She half-turns back, but Connie's looking away, staring into the recovery room, and the footsteps are getting closer, closer.

She dodges through the halls, activates Omega as she goes. He's smug, grinning in her head,_ welcome back_, and she very clearly and carefully imagines the variety of creative ways a sentient machine can go fuck himself.


	6. Variation VI: Recapitulation

**Variation VI: Recapitulation**

The next phase is starting.

Tex has heard the Director talking about it, the new AI fragments he and the Counselor will be matching to the most promising of the Freelancer agents. She tags along when York get his implantation, pulls Omega so she can watch the surgery without his thoughts intruding. She supposes she cuts a pretty sinister figure, a shadow of black armor lurking in the window next to all the guys in neat suits with clipboards. And then York glances up while the medicos are bickering about whether or not to anesthetize, and he shoots her the most exasperated eye-roll ever attempted by a man with only one working eye.

He comes out of it fine, although he complains so loudly about his headache that even Carolina tells him, fondly, to can it. Tex lurks in the corridor when he activates Delta for the first time. The Director quietly positions himself in York's blind spot and tosses him a pen, and York's hand snaps up to catch it, almost of its own accord. Delta murmurs something in a pleased undertone, and York gives a startled laugh.

There's something weirdly private about the scene, almost familial, and she's not entirely sure why she's been encouraged to watch. Until she activates Omega again, that is, and he frantically pores over her memories, her impressions of Delta. He's looking for something in the other AIs, in the way they interact with their users.

She sits down with the Director and the Counselor after that, and they ask her to report on her impressions. "Your input," the Counselor says, softly, "would be especially valuable." The Director glares at him for that one, and she's not sure why.

"Too soft," she says, and she's not entirely sure it's her words she's saying. "I'm sure York will find Delta useful in the field, and Delta's analytical nature should help keep York's more... unpredictable tendencies in line. But Delta's not going to make him into a super-soldier. Not like-" She stops, shuts her mouth, but the Director and the Counselor are nodding thoughtfully.

Carolina's scheduled to be implanted with the Sigma AI, apparently one of the most powerful fragments the Project has developed to date. There's a knock-down drag-out yelling match with the Director over that one, from which Tex manages to glean that Carolina wants to pass the AI over to the still-convalescing Maine instead, so he can have a means of communicating and eventually return to duty. Tex remembers Connie's words and wonders whether guilt has anything to do with it. _Might just be afraid,_ Omega purrs in her head, and she pulls him for three full hours as punishment for that one.

Carolina wins the argument, or the Director backs down. Either way, he emerges from the meeting with his spine stiff and the Counselor hovering nervously at his side, and he bellows for the infirmary to prep Maine for implantation. Carolina, striding past so quickly she doesn't even look at Tex, is flushed and pleased with herself, and for the first time Tex thinks maybe she envies her.

So Maine gets Sigma, and Omega practically salivates when he pores over Tex's impressions of the AI: powerful, clever, creative, manipulative. He would've been a good match for Carolina, Tex has to admit. Paired with the silent Maine, he's just fucking _creepy_.

Wyoming's up next with Gamma, a tragically dull AI with an equally tragic appreciation for the Freelancer's lexicon of knock-knock jokes—Omega keeps a close eye on Gamma for reasons that completely escape Tex. _If you start telling jokes_, she snarls at him, during one training session, _I'm so fucking out of here_. He gives a startled laugh at that one.

The last of the first wave of AIs goes to North, which sends South into an eminently predictable spiral of frustration and rage, and Tex has to rethink her initial assessment of how long it'll be until one or both of the twins snap. The Director calls it an experiment, but after watching North get implanted alone while his sister sulks in the locker room, Tex feels like "cruelty" might be a better word. Omega agrees, albeit a little more gleefully.

Theta, North's AI, scares the hell out of Tex. He's _shy_. The fucking computer is scared of his own shadow, childlike, practically clinging to North from day one while the Counselor tries to tease him out with gentle words and slow, lilting cadences. And hey, Tex has picked up bits and pieces of the whole AI theory thing, from briefings or overheard conversations between the Director or the Counselor, or, more frequently, from Omega's clever little whispers: she knows that the Project's been allotted only a single AI, a copy of a living being, and that the rest are all just harvested fragments of that initial personality. Omega's a part of the initial AI—the asshole part, she's pretty sure. Same for Delta and Sigma and all the rest. She's never really questioned it before.

Theta is the first time she's asked herself how, exactly, those fragments were harvested. Any process that could result in something so terrified, so desperately in need of protection and care...

She stops pulling Omega, sinks deeper into his whispered plotting, his half-heard ideas and feelings that supersede her own. She trains more than ever, fades in and out, automatic.

And always, always, echoing in her head, she hears Theta's first murmured words after his implantation: _Please don't hurt me anymore._


	7. Variation VII: Dissonance

**Variation VII: Dissonance**

A narrow window of opportunity opens two days after North's implantation, an intelligence cache hidden in plain sight in the midst of a bustling marketplace. One delayed transport means a small, likely unnoticed hole in its security, and the mission is simple: get in, get the data, get out. The Director overrides a hail of protests and opts to keep the implanted Freelancers to their new training regimens this time around. The squad he puts together for the retrieval is therefore what the Counselor diplomatically calls "less than ideal," and which Tex personally thinks is "a fucking disaster in the making": Connie, Wash, and South, with a distracted and overworked Carolina taking the lead.

Tex is, naturally, dispatched as backup. Omega urges her to point out to the Director that she could just as easily complete the mission on her own, but she knows full well that the Director's taking advantage of this opportunity to test the bottom-rung recruits for anything that might counter-indicate AI implantation. Carolina's not the only one with a talent for improvisation. "Watch them for me," the Director says, just before Tex heads out. "When they're not paying attention. When they think they're alone. I would... value your input."

She nods, and Omega fills her with a savage glee at the thought. Her memory is hazy as ever these days (_why does that seem so wrong?_), but she's got a sense that Connie, Connie who skips training sessions and lurks the halls at night, Connie who's gone from muttered frustration to a silent vigilance, _Connie_ definitely has something to hide. The thought of this milk-run turning into something nastier, something harder, something only she can do—that feels right, that feels good. And so Tex packs a veritable arsenal of small weapons—_No rocket launchers or grenades with this many civilians wandering around_, she thinks sternly in Omega's general direction, and, _Well_, he wheedles, _maybe just a few grenades. You never know._ And she can't argue with that.

She ducks into the dropship before any of the others, activates her cloak and waits in a shaded part of the ship to hide the shimmer, hoping vaguely that Wash doesn't start up his nervous pacing and bump into her. Omega laughs at the image and suggests a list of things she could do to him to make him regret inconveniencing her. Once he exhausts that list, he starts in on the things she could do to make him regret being born.

She's so absorbed in the mental pictures that she's startled when the team climbs aboard, the dropship pilot swinging straight past Tex to the cockpit without comment, though she has to have noticed the higher mass readouts. No surprise there—she probably got her job by being extremely good at not asking questions.

Carolina is lagging behind the others, and they're all strapped in and ready to go by the time she arrives. "Thought her armor gave her super-speed," South murmurs, then raises her voice, "Hey, Carolina, what'd you do to get stuck with us wash-outs?" She elbows Wash, sitting next to her. "No offense."

"Can it, South," Carolina says, and she even sounds out-of-breath—she's been working with the implanted Freelancers, Tex knows, and she suspects Carolina's been overdoing it, trying to convince herself she's still relevant, even without her AI. Wash looks like he's about to say something reassuring and probably ill-advised, but he seems to think better of it. "I happen to know," Carolina continues, moving up past Tex's cloaked form to strap herself into the co-pilot's seat, "that at least two of you are already on the schedule for implantation. So don't screw this one up, huh?"

It's a bluff, and Tex knows it—the second wave of implantations is still waiting on the formation of new AI fragments, and personnel decisions won't be made for some time after that. But South shuts her mouth, and Connie cocks her head, and even Wash straightens up a little in his seat.

"Everyone done with the pity party back there?" the pilot calls, and before South can voice a smart-ass reply, the engines flare. "Good."

The target's a black-market paramilitary affair, and as it turns out, four people in high-quality armor don't exactly stand out in the crowd. Unless intel's seriously dropped the ball on this one, they should be able to stroll right in to the second-hand electronics shop, take out the pitifully undermanned guards, and stroll back out for extraction. They even have an ID code for the data chip in question. Easy in, easy out. Easy. Yeah. Tex rolls her shoulders and falls back a bit, letting the others put their plan into motion. Omega's humming in her head, but drowning out even that rhythm is Tex's own personal mantra of _shut-up-shut-up-shut-up_. Simple, sure, but it really works for her.

Carolina ducks in first to scout out the location while South and Connie and Wash mill around awkwardly. Tex moves close enough to hear Connie murmur, "Maybe we shouldn't all be together like this," because yeah, they're being so obviously fake-casual that every passerby is giving them a second look. South and Wash wander off in opposite directions, window-shopping, but Connie...

Connie moves away with purpose, once she's sure the others are out of sight, and Tex follows her, Omega practically jittering with glee. She's heading for what looks like a public communications terminal, and Tex frowns, wishing she'd thought to drop in earlier and bug some of these systems. Still, she should be able to get close enough to listen in.

Omega reminds her that she's not paying attention, and Tex narrowly avoids bumping into a man walking past, a man who pauses to stare at the faint shimmer in the air, and she practically holds her breath, waiting for the alarm, one hand reaching for her belt, just waiting for an excuse, just waiting—

The man shakes his head and moves on. Disappointed, she releases her hold on the grenade.

She turns back in time to see a hand clamp down on Connie's shoulder, but it's only Carolina. Moving closer, she hears her say, "Mission accomplished!" in a far-too-pleased tone of voice.

South is moving through the crowd toward them with all the subtlety of a battering ram. "Seriously?" she calls. "That was way too fucking easy."

"I'm not complaining," Wash says, jogging up beside her. He's holding something in one hand that looks suspiciously like some kind of fruit on a stick.

Carolina opens one hand slowly, like a magician revealing a trick, and Tex catches herself leaning forward to see. One data chip, as described. "They were on a smoke break out back," she says, a grin in her voice. "I saw the opportunity and just zipped in and grabbed it."

Wash does a double-take. "Wait, isn't that, like." He seems to think better of his first protest, which undoubtedly has to do with the illegality of the action, and swaps it for, "Aren't they going to see you on the security monitors?"

With a shrug, Carolina leads the way back to the dropship. "Doubt it. Probably just a fake camera to deter thieves. Besides, if they recognize me, what are they gonna do?"

Wash is getting worked up, now, gesticulating with his fruit-kebab. "Well, they'll recognize you, for one thing! That armor's pretty distinctive, y'know. We've already got these other guys shooting on sight, we don't need the cops after us too."

"What makes you think they aren't already?" Connie mutters, too soft for Carolina to hear, but South looks over at her sharply.

"I'm just saying," Wash murmurs, when Carolina starts walking backward, the better to glare at him. "I'm glad it was such an easy mission, anyway."

"Yeah," South says. "Real nice exhibition of our talents."

"Following orders is important." Carolina puts just enough bite in her voice that South subsides.

"Wow," the pilot drawls as they all climb aboard, Tex carefully timing her footfalls with Carolina's so as not to attract notice. "You guys never mentioned you were just going shopping. Could've pulled any old pilot for that one. And-" Her tone sharpens when she spots Wash coming aboard. "Hey, no food on the plane. I got enough problems cleaning up puke without you guys bringing a buffet aboard."

"It's just a bit of fruit!" Wash protests. At the choir of disbelieving stares, he adds, weakly, "I skipped lunch."

Carolina sets her hands on her hips, but there's a teasing tilt to her head. "Well, Wash, I guess we gotta leave you behind. Have fun hanging out with our new friends in the electronics business. I'm sure they'll catch up with you before too long."

Wash sighs, tosses the fruit out onto the dusty ground, and stomps into the Pelican with a distinctly defeated air. "You guys are assholes."

The pilot laughs. "Highly trained operatives, my ass. Someday they're gonna tell me what you guys really do, and I'm gonna die laughing, and my life will finally make sense again. We got the package?"

"We got the package," Carolina says.

South seems to relax on the trip back up to the ship, and Connie even joins in on teasing Wash about his forbidden snack, but Tex's head is spinning with the frustration of unreleased tension. She can feel the muscles twitching up and down her back at every peal of laughter.

It'd be easy, Omega says, weirdly calm, didactic. Just creep up to the co-pilot's chair, draw the long knife from her side, slit Carolina's throat, then kill the pilot—the course is set already, anyway, autodocking in place. Move back before anyone knows what's wrong, while everyone's tied down by their safety restraints, pull the pistol. Three shots, easy. South first, quick and through the head. Wash in the gut, so Connie's watching him bleed out. Use that to find out what the hell Connie thought she was after, going for the public comm. Take her out next, quick and easy.

Tex shivers, nauseated, shaking, because she's not so sure, anymore, she's not so sure it's all Omega doing the thinking these days, and she can't remember the last time she slept, she can't remember, she can't remember.

She fades, just for a little while, and when she blinks awake again, the pilot is standing in front of her, waving a hand in front of her helmet. "Hey, invisi-lady. We're here. You should probably go do whatever top-secret thing it is you do."

Tex stares at her, wondering if she realizes how close she is to death at this very second. But the second passes. Time ticks on. She shoulders past the pilot, dropping the cloak as she goes, feeling bone-weary, sluggish. Omega is railing in her head, yelling at her to start training, to keep training, to fight until feeling returns again.

Instead, Tex wanders the halls, thinking about fuck-all and watching her non-thoughts drive each other into the ground. The Counselor and the Director find her, eventually, huddled in a corner of a little-used storage space, just sitting, staring at her hands, opening and closing her fists.

She fades again, for longer this time. When she wakes up, the first thing the Director tells her is that Connie has deserted.


	8. Variation VIII: Cadence

**Variation VIII: Cadence**

She's in position well before even Wyoming and Florida's advance guard breaches the building, and so she hunkers down in a dark corner with nothing but her thoughts for company.

Well. Not just _her_ thoughts.

But Omega seems quieter these days, suppressed and damped-down, almost elusive. And Omega may be many things, but subtle sure as hell isn't one of them._ I've been busy_, he snarls in her mind, but it's almost petulant, and by the time she thinks to ask him, _Doing what?_, she sees Connie.

She's got her armor, all right, and an entourage, most notably featuring two chain gunners with a serious flair for the dramatic, judging by their ridiculous getups. Before Tex can start working out angles of attack that aren't going to get her shredded, the leader of the little procession whirls around, pulls out a fucking _tomahawk_ of all things, and drops Florida from the rafters. Wyoming, the perennial dumbass, gives away his position with a burst of fire that very nearly mildly inconveniences their opponents, well done Wyoming, and that's all it takes for the chain gunners to open up a solid wall of covering fire while Connie and the leader make a break for it. Tex stifles a long, low sigh, and Omega absently brings up a few brief thoughts of murder and gore, but it's a token effort, and her own exasperation is enough to stifle him.

Then the cavalry arrives in the form of York, Wash, and Carolina, and they proceed to contribute to the situation by getting totally pinned down by the chain gun fire. Right. Go, Project Freelancer, go.

With a sigh, Tex activates her cloak, sets it to a random flickering that pisses Omega off but makes her much harder to target, and dives into the hail of bullets, skating past the baffled gunners before they can coordinate enough to close the small gaps between their lines of fire. Behind her, she hears a yell from Carolina, followed by a yelp of pain and a clatter of armored feet, and the gunfire starts up again. Great, yes, more rivalry bullshit is just what she needs right now. Especially since Connie and her friend have barricaded themselves behind a door that just happens to be guarded by turrets.

She can't help being mildly impressed when Carolina slams into cover across from her, looking more-or-less intact considering what she just went up against, but the moment is gone when she realizes Carolina made the leap alone, didn't bother bringing, you know, backup. Somewhat desperately, Carolina calls up York anyway, yelling for him to kill the power to the turrets. He sounds like he's seriously at a loss as to how to pull that off while being pinned down by two chain guns, and Tex rolls her eyes, trying to remember whether there are any other ways into that room.

To her surprise, a few moments later, the power flickers and dies. Carolina looks about as startled as Tex feels, which is small consolation, and they both step into the room, where Connie is pleading with her companion to go, to just go, and for an unsettling second Tex feels like she's looking into some warped mirror (_stay, just stay, please stay_), and then Connie turns to face them.

She's saying things that don't make sense, that the Director's been lying to them, that he's been operating outside the law, that he's doing something horrible and unspeakable. Automatically, Tex reaches for Omega's rage and twisted imagination. What she finds instead is a strange, silent void, a held-breath anticipation. She's on her own.

Fuck it.

She cocks her pistol, takes aim. "You need to stop talking, C.T.," because that's the name Connie's chosen for herself, that's the armor to divorce herself from Connie-the-kid, Connie who'd stayed up late to make sure Wash was gonna be okay. If she's gonna insist on wearing a fucking mask and being someone else, some _traitor_, Tex is gonna treat her like it.

"No," Connie says, sharp and defiant. "I know what you are, Tex. And I won't take orders from a shadow."

Omega shudders, somewhere at the base of Tex's spine, and the rage is there, but it's all her, it's all her. This is wrong. This is _wrong_. "Actually," Tex says, and she's nothing but two hands and a voice and a will, "we don't need you. We just need your armor."

She fires. Perfect headshot, and Connie's falling back and her friend's yelling, but the image fades, flickers. For a second Tex thinks she's hallucinating, seeing Omega's fucked-up thoughts again, but that's not right, she pulled the trigger, she—

She remembers Connie's armor enhancement, the fucking _hologram projector_, at exactly the same moment that the real Connie twists in behind her and slams a knife through her wrist, pinning it between her shoulders. It doesn't hurt, not really, and Tex stumbles forward into Connie's friend's grasp, into another goddamn tomahawk right to the chest. That's not something you survive, but she twists and wrenches it free, spins to her feet, joins Carolina in the frenetic mess of the fight. Connie's using her doubling effect well, catching the moments when Tex or Carolina have to glance away to send up the hologram. Her friend's good with his tomahawks, but he's not important, he's a distraction, nothing more.

Fighting alongside Carolina is like dancing, Tex thinks (_and when the hell did she ever dance?_). She feels a bit of the old joy in the sharp, precise motions, the set-ups and take-downs, feels like she did back when Omega was first implanted. Maybe even like she did before she had a goddamn AI fucking with her head. Carolina is grim, focused, every motion efficient perfection, and there's none of the rivalry bullshit anymore, there's just the job and the people who have to do it. Connie's getting desperate, her flickering holographic twin ducking and dodging erratically, not quite real enough.

It's the work of a few moments to take Connie's ally down for the count with a well-placed punch, and Tex wheels to see Connie lashing out with her knife at Carolina, but she's too fast, she's always too fast, and Connie stumbles, overbalanced. Tex snatches up a discarded tomahawk, takes the opening, misses. Connie dodges back, splits off a hologram to buy time. There is, Tex notices, a second tomahawk embedded in the wall. Simple problem. Simple solution.

_I won't take orders from a shadow._

She snatches the second blade from the wall, dives forward between the two Connies, slices at both until she feels one dissolve into thin air, and the other—

The blade slices easily into Connie's armor, biting deep into the flesh beneath, and when she stumbles back in shock, Tex lifts the second tomahawk and slams it into her chest alongside the first. Connie falls with a wet-sounding gasp. It's easy. It's right. It's good.

Carolina, her voice high and panicked, grabs Tex by the shoulder, "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" and Tex can only stare at her, because how the fuck did she think this was going to end?

But it's enough of a distraction for Connie's friend to drag her with him through the doors to their escape vehicle, and no, _no_, they're gone, they're beyond a sealed airlock, beyond reach. Connie's dead or dying, no question, but the armor's gone. The objective's failed. Tex snarls a reprimand at Carolina, yells through her comm link for extraction in the same breath.

Carolina pauses before leaving the room, her voice thick. "I don't know what's gotten into you, Texas, but you'd better figure out the difference between your enemies and your friends."

Tex swallows a rejoinder, breathing hard, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists, digging through her mind for Omega, craving that rage and that certainty and that eager violence. She finds only silence.

There's blood on the floor. None of it's hers. None of it's ever been hers.

She rides with the others on the transport back to the _Mother of Invention._ She pretends not to hear the little choked hitch in Wash's breathing. She pretends not to hear anything, feel anything.

_I won't take orders from a shadow._


	9. Variation IX: Duet

**Variation IX: Duet**

Training goes back to normal, after that. Even Omega gets into it again, his air of distraction fading in favor of the usual drive and determination. Everyone's avoiding her, she supposes, although it's not exactly like she had a weekly movie night with them before shit went down, so it's hard to tell the difference. But the lights in the training room are bright, blinding, and they make it harder to see shadows, and she likes that.

She does take notice, however, when Carolina storms in and demands to be implanted with the next _two_ AIs, the ones that had been reserved for Wash and South. And Carolina, like everyone else in the fucking universe, claims to know Tex's little secret, claims it's why she's so strong, why she is the way she is. With a surge of adrenaline Tex steps up closer to her, gets in her face, because she remembers the blades that should've killed her, almost remembers something else, and maybe this time there'll be answers—

The Director breaks things up, sounding strange and petulant, and he actually gives in to Carolina's demand, offers her Eta and Iota with the air of a longsuffering parent dealing with a toddler instead of the head of a highly dangerous military Project working with his top operative. It's disconcerting, and Tex feels weird enough about it that she manages to pull Carolina aside and offer some genuine words of encouragement before Omega reasserts his macho posturing bullshit.

She can feel him stretching his attention, his consciousness, upward, to the observation window, and she follows his gaze. Maine is standing in the window, Sigma glowing at his side. Unsettled, Tex jogs to catch up with the Director and the Counselor.

The surgery happens later that week.

Tex finds herself roaming the halls that day, Omega rattling around in her head with the air of someone cleaning the place up before a party, and he murmurs, _You know she's gonna ask for a fight after this_, and she grins behind her helmet, because this is gonna be one for the fucking books. Her aimless wandering gains a destination at the sound of raised voices coming from the locker room, where South is bellowing a rant about Carolina and, by association, Texas, and Wash is making weak little attempts at diplomacy that fail miserably, while North and York do their level best to calm things down. Tex steps into the room just in time to see South smash a fist into her locker. She didn't even know she had a locker.

Her nameplate falls, cracks in half, Tex-as, and something about that sends a swell of rage through her that startles even Omega. She moves to the center of the room, steps right into South's personal space, stares her down. "Pick. It. Up."

The guys hold their breath, and South is panting with the force of her own anger, staring up at Tex. After a long moment, she reaches down, grabs half the nameplate, and slams it into Tex's chest before stomping away.

North pops to his feet, "I... I should probably, uh, I better go," and races after his sister. He looks like he was half-expecting Tex to rip her head off. _Or get creative with a couple of tomahawks_, Omega mutters.

Tex goes to close her locker. It's not empty. There's a small all-purpose data chip sitting on the shelf. Probably some introductory training program everyone else got on day one, but it's hers, and she's weirdly pleased about that.

York is talking cautiously to her, the same walking-on-eggshells everyone's been doing, and she realizes they haven't really spoken since that first exhibition fight, way back when. She wonders whether he blames her for the damage to his eye or gives her credit for saving his life. He's surprisingly hard to read, all casual jokes and moments of almost painful honesty thrown up as smokescreens.

Omega doesn't give a shit what he thinks, but Tex kind of thinks she does.

He mentions that Carolina's already in surgery, asks if she wants to come with him and Wash to Recovery One to wait for her. "Yeah. Go on, York. I'm right behind you."

She looks at the data chip in her hand, shrugs and stows it in a pouch in her armor, to investigate later, and strides after them.

Carolina bounces back from the surgery almost immediately, and predictably demands a fight with Texas. The Director's in a planning meeting, but Tex doesn't need his approval to know she wants this, she needs this, and the others have an air of morbid curiosity that assures them a large audience. They set up with a standard arena fight, no holds barred, and York comes down to offer Carolina some last-minute advice. He seems nervous, babbling more than usual, and Carolina has to glare him off the training field.

Omega is murmuring excitedly in the back of Tex's head, actually pops up in holographic form next to her, but she just shakes her head. "I got this, Omega." And he listens, for once, subsides to watch with a mutter of, "Next time."

Carolina is standing straighter, and there's a flicker at her side as the twin AIs, Eta and Iota, blend together into something that glows a little brighter before dying away. Tex can already see a difference in her stance, something new and a little more reckless, and for a strange second she feels a pang of fear. Carolina's deadly without an AI, but with two? Tex isn't immediately certain whether even she and Omega could take that on. But she has to try it on her own. She has to know.

The fight starts, and they charge, both trying to close the range, and Tex can feel the old rhythm in her head, this is good, this is right—

A shout from the observation deck, desperate and practically unrecognizable. "No! _Allison_!"

Tex just has time to realize it's the Director, his hands pressed flat against the observation room's glass, and then Carolina's skidding to her knees, hands clapped over her ears, and Eta and Iota are flickering at her side, mirroring her motion, screaming _AllisonAllisonAllison_. Omega echoes the shout in her head, and she looks up to see chaos on the observation deck, North and York on their knees, Wyoming tearing his helmet off, Maine slamming clumsy hands at his own helmet, Wash looking on in baffled horror.

The Director is standing in the middle of it all, hands clasped behind his back, in control again. Tex stumbles over her own feet, falls to her knees, dragging Omega back into silence.

And then the screaming starts.

Carolina rolls onto her back, tries to curl in tighter, fingers scrabbling at her helmet latches until she manages to yank it off, and all the while she's screaming, high and horrified, "Make them stop make them stop _makethemstop_."

Tex pushes back to her feet, advances on Carolina, and for the first time she thinks Omega's actually afraid, badly shaken and lashing out. She offers Carolina a hand, but Carolina musters enough strength to shove it away, curling in tighter, screaming and screaming. Tex looks up to see the others getting to their feet, their own echoes fading, _AllisonAllisonAllison_, and still Carolina is screaming and the Director is watching, just watching, like he's doling out some much-needed punishment for a wayward child.

"What the fuck is going on?" she yells, and sees York's agitated pacing—he wants to be down here, but he doesn't want to risk the Director's ire, and when did they all start getting so afraid? "Someone get down here!" But the Director only turns and walks away.

_It's okay_, Omega says, a new determination and calm in his voice._ You know what to do. End it._ And Tex wheels around, crouches next to the still-writhing Carolina, her voice already failing with the force of her screams. _You've got two hands,_ Omega says,_ and a voice, and a will. You know what to do with them._ And Tex's hands are moving forward, almost of their own accord, and she can picture what needs to be done, a simple twist, merciful really, just a couple of snapped vertebrae and no more screaming, no more _AllisonAllisonAllison_.

And yet, a part of her thinks dreamily, those pain-bright eyes are so familiar. So familiar. So—

She stops, feels Omega's push lessen, lowers her hands with an effort. Carolina's eyes focus, briefly, and Tex swallows hard, raises a fist. "Sorry, kid. It's for your own good."

York comes tearing down the stairs in time to see Carolina slump back, unconscious, and his voice is sharp and panicked, no hint of the usual casual drawl. "Where are the goddamn medics? We need to get these fucking things out of her!"

He shoves past Tex to Carolina's side, and she staggers back, and the weight of Omega's confusion and anger and lingering pain is almost enough to drive her back to her knees. With one savage motion, she pulls Omega offline, embraces the silence, no more echoes, no more echoes.

The medics show up, eventually, and Carolina is wheeled away to Recovery One, York at her side. The others are still standing, frozen, in the observation deck, and Tex thinks she sees the flicker and flare of Sigma before he blinks out and Maine turns away.

And then, inevitably, they're all gone, they all leave, and Tex is standing alone in the center of the training room with nothing but her own circling thoughts for company, round and round and round, echoing into a void.


	10. Variation X: Intermezzo

**Variation X: Intermezzo**

Carolina doesn't wake up.

The Director claims he wants to evaluate her mental state before attempting to remove her AIs, and it sounds plausible enough that even Tex isn't entirely sure he's making it up. So she goes back to her regular training regimen, keeps Omega deactivated, fakes all the aggression and hatred she could ever need. She doesn't trust him. She doesn't trust herself.

Eventually, she steels herself and visits Recovery One, where Carolina is pale and still and barely breathing. York, slumped forward in his chair with his head pillowed on the edge of her bed, looks almost as bad, with dark-rimmed eyes and a new gauntness to his cheekbones, one hand outstretched to capture hers.

North is also standing at the window, and she supposes they've all been taking shifts for this silent vigil. For all that Carolina's definitely a bit of a hardass, she's their leader, and a lot of what she's done has been for them. They owe her their lives. Tex feels a pang, because she misses that kind of loyalty, that sharp-edged friendship (_and how does she remember that so clearly?_), and the weird, sentimental moment prompts her to let North draw her in to conversation.

She confronts North about his sister, explains that South is already petitioning to get one of Carolina's AIs, and he sighs and agrees to talk to her about it. She's never noticed before how tall he is, how he carries himself not to intimidate, but to reassure, a looming presence that's strangely calming. She envies South, a little, and remembers her own siblings, her own siblings, her own—her head aches, down at the nape of her neck, and she remembers that it's not going to end well, between the twins. It can't. The Director's made sure of that.

"Piece of advice," she says, covering the moment of confusion. "One soldier to another? You watch her."

"Something's... different about you," North says, and she really must be off-balance, because she confesses to him that she's been pulling Omega, that she hasn't used him since the fight with Carolina. And, much to her surprise, it's okay, she feels like she can actually trust him not to tell the Director. She can confide in him. It's easy. It's right. It's good.

In return, she tells him that the Director has already slated Wash for a new implantation, despite the whole mess with Carolina, and North says, "You're _kidding_ me," and it's so good to hear that someone else thinks this is getting pretty fucked up, it's so good to hear.

"Hey. Call me when she wakes up. Or... if she doesn't."

"Will do."

She walks away from the conversation feeling good, hears Theta's childlike voice echoing back through the halls, "I think I'm starting to like her. At least, better than I did before."

Wash is up for surgery that afternoon, and Tex finds herself nervously pacing the halls, fingering the data chip from her locker, a little mystery she'd forgotten in the middle of all the chaos with Carolina. The AI theory class is over for the day, so the classroom will be free of interruptions, and on a whim she walks over, takes a seat, plugs in the chip.

Her breath catches in her throat when Connie's face appears on the screen. "Agent Texas," she says, then pauses. "Allison. If you're reading this, then that means I escaped. Or, well, at the very least I'm probably not around anymore." And she almost wants to stop it there, stop the playback, just close the file and try to forget the kid's soft voice and open face. "I want to leave behind all the data I've been collecting about Project Freelancer. I never could shake the feeling that something was wrong with the program. The secrets, the lies, the manipulation. Smoke, all of it, obscuring a big damn fire. I did some digging and now I know what the Director's been hiding. What he did."

Tex exhales slowly, and something inside is screaming at her to turn it off, to turn it off now, before it's too late. She stays frozen, her hands resting flat on the display. "He broke the law, Allison. The one law they don't just slap you on the wrist for. I'm taking the originals with me as an insurance policy. I leave this copy for you, not because you are the best soldier in the squad—" The girl on the screen sighs, and looks for a moment like she's much older, much more tired. "—but because I know that I can trust you the most. After reading these files, you will understand why."

Connie's been looking down through most of the recording, but now her eyes snap up, seem to focus on Tex through the screen. "Good luck," she says, and adds, almost shyly, "Your friend, Connie."

The video ends, the files open. Tex moves her hand like she's in a dream, opens the folder labeled "AI Experimentation". There's a section about Alpha, the original AI from which the others were fragmented, and... and a reference to Beta, presumably the first fragment. It's password-protected, so Tex scrolls past, reads about the others, about Delta and Gamma and Omega, and finds an article about AI fragmentation, about the Director's theories that an AI could be broken into its component parts by exposing it to various scenarios, by forcing it to twist and stretch and snap to save itself.

_He tortured it_, she realizes, with a horror that settles as a heavy lump in the pit of her stomach because on some level, she always suspected, she always knew. He threw the Alpha into impossible situations, tore at its new mind like a dog worrying a bone, harvested the parts of itself it tried to protect from harm. She's breathing hard, now, scrolling back to the Beta, the password-protected file.

She types in one word. **ALLISON**.

The file opens under her hand, and she sees a face, a young woman with blond hair and a uniform and she knows that face, she _knows_ it. Her eyes are skipping, her breathing coming too fast, and it takes her too many tries to read the article itself, but it doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter, because she's remembering. She's remembering.

She's shipping out that day, saying goodbye to her sweet but clingy boyfriend, and for some reason, when she drags through her mind for the memory of that moment, she sees it from his eyes, sees her own face curl into a fake-looking smile, feels her own wrist slip out of his grasp. She looks sad, she thinks. She feels frustrated, trapped.

She leaves. She doesn't say goodbye. And somewhere, out in the fighting and the shouting and the cold, sharp pain, she dies.

When they created the Alpha, she came along for the ride, a memory so sharp, so real, so desperately and carefully maintained, that it formed a whole other person. She's breathing harder, now, only she's not, only she's _not_, because she's a fucking shadow and shadows don't need to breathe, shadows aren't really alive.

She runs a hand down the armor the tomahawk had sliced through, repaired and replated. There's no scar. There's no real skin beneath, just some artificial fucking body for an artificial fucking mind.

She stands up, grabs the data key as an afterthought, and explodes into motion, pacing down the hallways. She wants to be angry, she wants to feel like killing. She misses Omega, but she remembers what he is, now, and she doesn't want that snapped-off rage anywhere near her. So she walks, and pretends to breathe, and pretends to think. Pretends to be.

The Director copied himself to create Alpha (_the gray at his temples, time marching on without her_). He's been trying to get her back, the sick fuck, he's always been trying—

She slumps against a wall, ignoring the stares of a couple of guards passing by, grabs her helmet with both hands, because _Jesus_, Connie died for this shit, North and South are at each other's throats, Carolina's still unconscious, and they're breaking apart, all of it's breaking apart.

There's a veritable stream of people sprinting down the hallway, now, and in a daze she collars the last one. "What's going on?"

He flinches bodily at the contact, stammers, "Th-they implanted Agent Washington, but something went wrong. He went nuts! Just started screaming. It was horrible. They had to sedate him."

She opens her hand, and he makes a run for it. She watches him go, then looks down again at her hands, two hands and a voice and a will. She's going to make this right. She has to make this right.

She doesn't have a single fucking thing left to lose.


	11. Variation XI: Reprise

**Variation XI: Reprise**

It's childishly easy to act like everything's normal—the Director and the Counselor are, after all, entirely preoccupied with debriefing Washington and Epsilon. They don't notice that she's been skipping training sessions, that she's started making plans. She makes an effort to be seen with the others, subdued and nervous like they are, and she even stands vigil one night, watching over York and Carolina. North opens up to her again, confesses some of his fears about his sister, and she sighs and tells him it's okay, it's gonna be okay, because she remembers now, she remembers that's what people do: they lie.

North, weirdly buoyed by her platitudes, actually manages to convince York to at least leave Carolina's side to, y'know, shower and shave and eat and all that good stuff. Two hours later, they're all sitting in the mess hall, North drawing York into telling a funny story, Wyoming interjecting with the odd knock-knock joke, South slouched across from North, pretending not to listen. Even Maine's there, sitting at the end of the table with a watchful air that doesn't seem half as creepy without Sigma's glowing presence. As for Tex, she's leaning against the wall, separate but still part of the group, occasionally throwing in a bit of heckling to keep York on his toes.

Inside, she's scrambling, she's trying to weigh pros and cons. A lot depends on the next opportunity—she's already decided to make a break for it, but whether or not she should do it alone...

South looks up first, chokes on a bite of food and starts coughing. North reaches over to pound her on the back, then freezes. Maine makes a low, startling growl. Slowly, everyone turns to follow their gaze. Tex straightens up, balances on the balls of her feet.

Washington is standing at the entrance to the mess hall.

He's not wearing armor, dressed instead in a set of crisp and clean workout clothes, and his eyes are never still, darting from person to person, searching out each corner of the room. His mouth is pressed into a tight line, and he keeps rubbing at his right arm, probably remembering injection points, Tex thinks. He takes an uncertain step forward, quailing a little under all the attention, then says, in a soft, hoarse voice, "Hey, guys."

There's a moment of stunned silence, which York breaks by jumping to his feet, springing over to pound Wash on the back. "Holy shit, man! You're back!"

Wash's mouth relaxes briefly into a smile as the others leap up to join York, but Tex, hanging back, watches him, watches the way his lips move when he thinks nobody's watching, a constant, ever-present murmur. His eyes don't stop moving, and she realizes, belatedly, that they haven't pulled Epsilon after all. That's bad. She's pretty sure that's really, really bad.

North, alarmed when Wash starts to sway a little, pushes everyone out of the way and gets him to a seat, then clasps his shoulder warmly. "Good to have you back. They pull Epsilon?"

Wash blinks. "Hm? No, no, he's here. I'm here. The gang's all here." He laughs, a small, sharp, startling sound, then touches his mouth, frowning. "I, uh. I've been pulled from active duty for a bit. They say I'm having trouble adjusting."

York shrugs, sinking back into the seat across from him. "Takes some getting used to, Wash. You'll be okay. D. and me, we had some things to work out before we could get used to living in the same head. Bit like having a really weird roommate."

"I recommend finding some common ground," Wyoming pipes in. "A similar sense of humor, for instance."

Wash smiles, sickly, but tucks into his meal readily enough, seeming content to let the others' banter and stories wash over him. Tex goes back to being a passive observer, tries to read his lips when he starts murmuring again. She's almost certain he's telling someone to shut up.

When they finally get up to leave, Wash lags behind to clean up his tray—that much, at least, hasn't changed—and Tex approaches him, cautiously. "Hey, Wash."

He stares up at her, his lips moving like he's trying to work out some complicated calculation. Then his face breaks into a sunny smile, and he says, "Hey, Allison," sketches a teasing salute, and jogs after the others in a loping, painfully familiar stride that's not his own.


	12. Variation XII: Prelude

**Variation XII: Prelude**

Tex is spending more and more time in the locker room, partly because it's the easiest way to pretend she's training, partly because it gives her the opportunity to do a little snooping. She needs to know more about these people, needs to know who might be a potential ally in her fight. Right now, she thinks she's gonna need all the help she can get.

Today, though, she's just there for the quiet, for the chance to think where she's not likely to be interrupted—no training scheduled today, a day off, a little rest for the exhausted Freelancers at last. She sits on a bench, props her forearms against her knees, and just listens to the illusion of her own breathing, trying to tease out new memories. She thinks she's got something old, something from way back... when? A little girl with red hair and green eyes, reaching up, always reaching—

There's an annoying sound at the back of her head that keeps echoing, throwing her out of the memory, a tap-tapping of a dripping faucet somewhere, and she sighs, straightens up, thinks, _God_ damn _it, Leonard, how many times have I told you to tighten that thing?_

She freezes. There's a headache building at the back of her neck, sure sign that she's venturing right to the edge of her limited memory, but surely, surely there's something there, some thread she can pull to draw in the whole story.

Wait, no. Something's not right. A faucet. A dripping faucet, on a spaceship with limited resources and round-the-clock maintenance staff?

With a sigh, she lets the memory slip away, gets to her feet and wanders through the open door to the shower room to seek out the source of the noise. Someone on maintenance is gonna have a seriously bad day, she decides.

She stumbles to a stop, her breath catching in her throat.

One of the mirrors over the sinks is shattered, hairline cracks spiraling out from a single impact point, shards of glass scattered all over the floor. For a second, she thinks it's just a trick of the light, but the cracks in the mirror really are red with blood, streaming down in rivulets that drip-drip-drip to the ground. She breathes again, backing up a step, and draws her sidearm. Surely it's too early, surely nobody suspects, surely—

A low groan sounds from one of the shower stalls, and she moves closer, cautiously, noting the smears of blood and slivers of mirror marking her trail. Holding her breath, she pushes the door open.

Wash is huddled on the ground, his face a mask of blood, sobbing in a near-silent, shaking rhythm. His eyes go wide, not quite focused on her, and his hand reaches out, scrabbling in the blood and the glass around him, his voice weird and hoarse and shaking. "Allison, I tried to stop him, I tried to stop Epsilon, but he did it, he pulled the trigger, I think he's dead, I think he's," he shakes his head, slumps forward, his lips still moving, mumbling, "_No stop please stop I don't want this I don't want to know this just stop_—"

Tex lowers her pistol and hurries to his side, crouching beside him, not sure where to touch, where to apply pressure. There's glass embedded in his face and throat, and she doesn't want to push anything deeper. His crisp, clean workout clothes are smeared with bloody fingerprints where he's grabbed at himself, tried to draw himself into a tighter ball. There's a lot of blood under his head, and his mumbling voice is fading, so she shakes off her paralysis and gently turns him onto his back.

She winces at a particularly deep slice in his throat, picks out as much glass as she can before applying pressure to the wound. He shudders and goes still, and she listens for his breathing the way she'd listened to her own, in-out, in-out, fast and shallow.

It occurs to her that she's gonna need help with this around the same time she hears a footfall behind her. She turns, careful not to shift her grip on Wash, to see York in full armor, holding his pistol loosely in one hand, Delta flickering at his side. "He did this to himself," she snarls at him, when he raises his weapon uncertainly. "You still got that healing unit?"

"Uh," he says, and then shakes himself. "Yeah, sure." He pulls it out, deploys it, and Tex shivers, remembering the way the damn things feel, warm and tingly and not-quite-right. "How's he doing, D?"

Delta pauses momentarily, then says, "The impact patterns in the mirror suggest he likely has a serious concussion. That said, I do not believe Agent Washington has yet reached a dangerous level of blood loss, given current loss rate, and that we saw him only minutes before Agent Texas entered the locker room." And that's interesting, because how the hell does Delta know how long she's been in here? "Apart from that, I am unqualified to judge."

"Some help you are," York says, huddling down next to Tex and touching Wash's shoulder, as though to reassure himself his friend's still there.

"He is not wearing his armor, York," Delta says, sounding hurt. "I cannot gauge his vital statistics as easily."

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, it's just." York exhales, and Tex knows he's thinking about Carolina, still comatose, another friend out of commission. "This is so fucked up. Why would he do that? He seemed okay."

"Would you like me to call for medical support?" Delta asks.

"Yeah," York says, and cautiously traces a couple fingers through Wash's hair, combing out some of the glass. "Yeah, you better do that."

They're quiet for a while, waiting for the medics, and Tex says, into the silence, "Were you spying on me?"

York shrugs, doesn't meet her eyes. "Maybe a little."

"Just you?"

"Why? You planning on killing me to keep me quiet?"

"Nah. Just curious."

He thinks about that for a second, then vents a sigh, checking the settings on the healing unit. "Yeah, just me. So far. You've been acting weird. Weirder than usual, I mean. And I guess you sorta saved my life way back when, so I guess I sorta wanted to be sure before sending in the cavalry." He looks up, as though searching her face, as though her helmet will give anything away. "Do you know what the hell's going on here?"

And this is it, this is the sort of opening she's been looking for. She breathes slower. Cautious. Don't push too hard. "I think... I think Epsilon remembers what they did to him. I think he's tearing himself apart in Wash's brain."

York hisses, rubs at his helmet in lieu of his face, then glances over to Delta. "Does this have something to do with the Alpha?"

Before Tex can answer, the medics arrive and swarm on Wash.

In the days to come, whenever she thinks back to the Project, she'll remember that image: a still, bloody face surrounded by men in uniform. The blood of a friend on her hands. The blood of too many friends.


	13. Variation XIII: Fugue

**Variation XIII: Fugue**

They make the call to start pulling AIs soon after that. Everyone's very, very quiet about it, a unified front of no-comment, and Tex starts training again, because she can feel the Director—_Leonard_—watching her more closely now. Not suspicious, not precisely. Not yet. But he's smart enough to realize there's gonna be a problem, and she can practically hear the gears turning in his head, the redundancies, the fallback plans.

When Wash is strong enough, they'll put him through surgery, remove Epsilon first. Much as Tex suspects this is just the Director covering his ass—she's heard whispers about an oversight committee's investigation—she's glad Wash might have a chance to get out of this with his brain in one piece. Carolina, still unconscious, is slated to be next, and from there down the line to the less problematic operations.

Everyone's angry. South is pissed that the implantations have stopped, killing her chances of ever getting her own AI. North doesn't show his anger as obviously, but he's spending more and more time with Theta at his side, lecturing to him with a thin veneer of calm over an undersurge of panic, like a parent trying to prepare a child to leave home for the first time. Wyoming and Maine are like Tex, training harder and harder, and she wonders what the hell Maine's gonna do without Sigma to speak for him. Given how fucking creepy Sigma is, Tex isn't entirely sure that'll be a bad thing, and for the first time she starts wondering whether some of the fragments might've been in on this whole torture-the-Alpha thing from the start. It'd definitely be in Omega's style.

After training, she walks in to find York slumped in his usual seat in the infirmary, at Carolina's bedside, listening to Delta rattle off facts and figures with a faint, almost proud smile on his face. He glances up at her, winces when she cocks her head to the side. "Hey, don't judge me. D's got some pretty fun facts."

"It's okay," Tex says, and, after a moment's hesitation, sits down at Carolina's other side. Wash is in isolation, and it's hard not to keep glancing over toward the soundproof doors. "Can't say I was ever that attached to Omega, but, well. I think I get it."

York yawns hugely, stretching his arms, and she wonders how long he's been hanging around this time. "Hey, whatever happened to Omega? You still got him?"

Tex shrugs. "Still got him. Gonna keep him offline, until I can figure out what I want to do. Once I bust out of here, I figure I'll have more of a chance."

York blinks at her, then seems to come into focus all at once, straightening in his seat. "Wait, what? Have you gone-"

Tex leans back in the chair, crossing her arms. "Boss-man's stuck in a meeting. The others are training. I've looped the security monitors in this room—you never leave here anyway. Won't look suspicious."

He's frozen in place for a second, and then Delta flares a reddish shade Tex has never seen before, and York seems torn between getting up and staying close to Carolina. Wary, cautious. She can't blame him, after... after everything.

"The Director's experiments with the Alpha AI are illegal," she says, keeping her voice level, calm. Believable. "He's been torturing it to get the AI fragments. The Project has gone way, way outside the law in its attempts to complete its mission." She sighs, leans forward. "We're the bad guys, York. Always have been."

He grabs Carolina's hand like it's a lifeline, but she knows he believes her when Delta fades back to a more relaxed green. York tilts his head to the side, tilts it back, and says, "Well, fuck."

"Yeah," says Tex. "That about sums it up."

"I mean," says York, "I suspected, and... and D's told me stories." Delta nods, looking more subdued than usual. "Bits and pieces, shit he almost remembers. You know." He blows out another breath, looking down at Carolina's hand like he can't remember reaching for it. "Ah, hell. Did Connie-?"

"She knew," Tex says. "She left me a data chip. Proof I... couldn't argue with." She shrugs, looks down at her hands, decides right then and there not to tell him about the whole Beta thing if she can help it. It'd just complicate things. Right. "Wish I'd found it before it was too late."

Abruptly, York pops up to his feet, starts pacing. "So what the hell do we do with this, Tex? This is huge! This is way bigger than we are. There's not-" He looks up at the security camera, his face shifting. "There's not a lot we can do, is there?"

Tex watches him pace, carefully keeps her own body language calm, still. Channeling North, maybe. "We stay here, they're gonna come down on us every bit as hard as they're gonna come down on him. I'm running, York."

His breath escapes in an explosive little laugh. "Running! Right, because that worked so fucking well for Connie."

"And," Tex says, her voice cutting across his, "I'd like you to come with me."

She's never seen York at a loss for words, not like this. He shakes his head at her, his mouth working, exasperated, and finally manages to bite out, "Are you _insane_? Are you actually fucking insane? Are you shitting me right now?"

"Look." Texas raises her voice, just a little, just to get the point across. "If you stay here, certain things will happen. They _will_, York. You will wake up one morning and find that they've taken Delta away. You will never see him again. They'll take Iota and Eta from Carolina, too, and somehow I don't think they'll be any too gentle about it. They're cutting their losses, York. They're running. And guess who's gonna be hanging around a big ol' spaceship with weird paramilitary armor and brains full of weird paramilitary training when the authorities show up? And that leaves the Director free to start again, to get it right this time, to keep trying."

He's gone pale, gripping the back of his chair with white-knuckled fingers. She gentles her voice, a little. "We're scapegoats, York. The Director's not in control anymore. If we get out, we can get help. We can finally do something _good_."

He looks away, but he's nodding, slowly, and Tex is almost sure he's with her when his gaze falls on Carolina again, and he blanches. "I can't just leave her like this!"

"The doctors think she'll be awake any time, York. She's stable, the integration's just taking a little extra time."

"They've been saying that for a week," he says, but his resistance is faltering, just a little. "Why me?"

Now it's Tex's turn to look away. She shrugs. "Because I sorta saved your life, way back when. Because maybe that makes you the closest thing I've got to a friend."

He's looking at her like she's crazy, which isn't exactly anything new. He winces, rubs at the back of his neck like he's got a headache coming on. "And we'd come back for the rest?"

Tex straightens, decides to take that as a victory. "We might be able to take some more with us in the first place. I'm not sure it's time to make a run for it yet. I just want to be ready, just in case, because surprise is our only chance at pulling this off. I've got an escape vessel ready to go at a minute's notice."

He inhales, rubs the back of his neck, looks at Delta like he's about to ask for a probability of success, then apparently thinks better of it. "Okay," he says. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but okay. What's the plan?"

She glances at the clock; five more minutes of looping. "I go back to training, you carry on here like nothing ever happened." She pauses, finally voices the thought that's been burning in her head for days, now, thrumming in her mind like a mantra. "I want to try and save him, York. I think we can rescue Alpha. He's every bit as much a victim in all this as we are. If we have him on our side, as evidence-"

York shakes his head, but there's a faint smile curling at the corner of his lips, and he's regained his composure enough to put a bit of a drawl back in his speech. "You, Agent Texas, are capital-c Certifiable. But aren't we all?"

She gives the weak joke a bigger laugh than it deserves, because she's tired, she's so tired, but now she's not in this alone. "Thanks," she says, and means it.

He sighs, staring dramatically up at the ceiling. "You are so gonna get me killed, Allison."

She falters, wonders where he heard the name, but it doesn't sound nearly as weird as she'd expected, coming from him. It's not hers, never has been, but maybe she can borrow it for a while.

She makes it about halfway to the training room before a piercing alarm starts sounding, and a familiar voice comes in over the intercom, hoarse and shaking. "Alert! Alert! All-" A pause, for a racking cough. "All hands! Agents Texas and York have gone rogue! Don't let them... don't-" The voice fades out, but Tex feels the rhythm in her head slamming in to take its place, louder and louder, and she realizes, belatedly, that she's running back the way she came, sprinting, because that was Carolina's voice, that was _Carolina_.

She rounds a corner and sees York tearing toward her. He's trying to don his helmet as he runs, and she catches sight of a bruise already spreading on his forehead, and a dark expression she's never seen on him before. He manages to fasten the helmet in place. "Let's go," he says. "Let's just fucking _go_."

"What did she hear?" Tex snaps, because they need to know, they need—

"Enough, she heard enough, she thinks we're deserting, okay? I didn't exactly have time to explain." He gestures toward his forehead, apparently realizes what a futile gesture it is with his helmet in the way, and lowers his hand, staring around like he's wondering what he's doing there. Shock, Tex suspects.

Delta flickers to life next to him. "York, you are hyperventilating. I recommend—"

"Got it, D," he snaps, but she notices that he controls his breathing from then on. "We got a way out of this?"

This is wrong, this is wrong, there's no way they can get to Alpha when everyone's on the alert, this isn't the plan she'd wanted, the plan she'd hoped for. Every fucking thing she tries always seems to go wrong. "We cut and run," she says. "We can always break back in later."

"Oh, great, we can always break back in," he echoes, and groans. "Be an infiltration specialist, they said. You've got a knack for it, they said."

"It may not be too late for a change in specialization," Delta says, helpfully.

"Yeah, wishing I'd gone for track in high school about now," York says, and draws his pistol. "Lead on."

They run, and encounter their first patrol of rather confused guards right out of the gate. Tex tries for stunning blows rather than fatal hits, but it's always hard to tell with hand-to-hand, and her nerves are singing with anxiety and terror, the need to go forward, forward. She clears the group, activates her cloak as an afterthought, and half-turns to see York sprinting up beside her. "Clear," he says, in a shaky voice.

"Clear. Might want to cut through the locker room, here. Mine was the only training session scheduled, so it should be empty." He's looking back, over his shoulder, and maybe it's just sinking in that this is the point of no return. She sharpens her tone to something more formal, pure military. "Forward in ten, York. Sync?"

His helmet snaps up, and his body language changes to something tenser, almost streamlined. "Sync."

She shoulders open the door, slips in as quietly as she can, letting York watch their six. "Clear," she mutters, and moves up to the next row of lockers, wincing at the small thump of the door closing behind them.

She rounds a corner and nearly stumbles right into Maine.

He's standing in front of her, a behemoth in white armor. He's clutching his brute shot. There's blood dripping from it. "What the _fuck_," she says, and then he slashes at her, and she dances back, nearly colliding with York in the process.

York staggers up, then ducks back from another swing. "Maine, what the hell are you doing?" He darts out of range of another swipe, but then his attention seems to snag on something at the far end of the room. "Wyoming?"

Tex takes the opportunity to dive in, throwing herself on Maine's back in a vain attempt at a chokehold of some sort. He shakes her off, slamming her into a row of lockers, but she bounces back immediately. York doesn't take the opening, keeps his distance, looking baffled. She follows his gaze to where a still figure is slumped against the wall. It's Agent Wyoming, she thinks, and what the _fuck_ is Maine doing, attacking a teammate?

She turns back in time to see a weird orange glow, like Sigma's aura, flickering around Maine, and then he brings his blade around and slams it into her chest. York is yelling something, behind them, and Tex pulls herself away, stumbling back. Maine looks at her, plainly startled when she doesn't immediately fall over and die. She grins at him, behind her helmet.

"Good try, but I don't bleed," she says, and lashes out with a roundhouse kick that sends him staggering into a locker. He doesn't get up.

She inspects the gash in her armor; all swagger aside, a few inches deeper and he would've done some serious damage even to her artifical body. She exhales, slowly. "York, get over here! We're leaving!"

He stumbles gracelessly toward her, staring at the deep rent in her armor. "I, uh. How?" He pauses, shakes his head. "You have got to teach me that trick someday."

"Yeah," she says, "Comes in handy, sometimes. C'mon."

York pauses next to Wyoming, bends down beside him, but there are voices in the corridor, yelling, and he curses and stumbles back to his feet, jogging to catch up with her. Out through the shower entrance, quick cut through the edge of the training room, into another corridor, another row of guards, these ones better-prepared, in a solid defensive formation.

Tex barely blinks, just activates her cloak and skates in, plants an elbow in the throat of the first guy, uses his panicked momentum to fling him into a row of his friends, brings up the heel of her hand to snap back the chin of another, crushes the arch of his foot with hers, snaps a kick against the back of his knees to bring him down just as he thinks to start firing his rifle. His wild shot takes another two down at the legs, lots of blood loss there, no help for that, and then she's through.

"Alert!" Delta calls, and she turns back to see York struggling in hand-to-hand with a guard she'd missed, a guard holding a wickedly curved and definitely non-regulation knife. York could take the guy on any other day, she thinks, no problem, but he's on edge and shocky and doesn't really want to hurt his opponent, and his block is a bit too gentle, too careful, and the guard slams his blade into York's side with a sickening sound that makes Tex think, nauseatingly, of Connie.

With a snarl, she doubles back, draws her pistol, shoots the guard through the head twice, just to be sure. He gurgles and collapses, and York staggers back, coughing, Delta flickering red. Before Tex can get to him, he pulls the knife free from his side and stares at it, looking dazed.

"I am applying shunts and anesthetic to the affected area," Delta says. "The injury will not be fatal."

"Nice job, Delta," Tex says, and looks back up the corridor, where footfalls are coming closer, faster. "York."

He's still staring at the bloodied knife in his hand, swaying slowly on his feet.

"_York_."

"I hear you, I hear you," he says. "Just, y'know. Ow." He exhales, slowly, and she can pinpoint the moment the anesthetic hits his system. He can too, apparently. "Okay, wow, D's handing out the good stuff. You ever heard me sing? Because I think I kinda feel like singing."

"Later," Tex says, and grabs him by the shoulder, pushing him ahead of her down the last stretch of corridor. There are guards on the main entrance to the hangar bay, but she's stashed a little escape vehicle in one of the baffles reserved for maintenance, made use of some clever and creative tricks to conceal it. She's been preparing for days, after all. Longer, she suspects, ever since Omega started feeling wrong, ever since she started having to fight her own thoughts as much as his.

Delta steps up the painkillers when they're safely aboard the cramped capsule, and York collapses into a seat, dangling limp against his restraints. Tex takes the capsule out of its makeshift dock slowly, carefully, activates her distraction in the form of a minor explosive planted in the hangar bay.

And they're gone. She holds her breath until they're out of weapons range. They're gone. They're safe.

"How's York?"

Delta flickers closer to her, back to his usual green glow. "He will require some medical attention at our next stop to seal the wound. I can direct you to perform the steps, if need be. There will be some minor pain, but he will accommodate. He is... surprisingly good at that."

"Okay, good," she says, and exhales, setting their first prearranged course and resting her head back against her chair, just breathing, just breathing.

"Congratulations," Delta says, after a moment. "I detect no signs of pursuit. Your plan appears to have been successful, Agent Texas."

Tex breathes in, looks at her hands, clenches them into fists, then relaxes them. "Not quite, Delta. We've still got work to do."

* * *

**One more chapter to go! The final chapter goes up on Thursday-thank you so much for the comments and faves and messages of support for this fic. There's plenty more where this came from; an all-new Freelancer fic starts updating on Wednesday, February 26. Stay tuned!**


	14. Variation XIV: Coda

**Variation XIV: Coda**

She comes back. She always comes back.

It's a bit easier to break into the _Mother of Invention_ than it was to break out, by virtue of the simple fact that, as York insists on pointing out, breaking into a ship full of people who want you dead is not a real smart thing to do. They make it in, set off a few alarms that bolster her pet theory that York has never successfully picked a lock in his life, and she sends York off to cause a distraction. He seems just a bit too pleased with his assignment.

Convincing York to come back wasn't all that difficult, really. She knows he still dreams about finding Carolina, about explaining everything to her, about taking her with him. She wants to tell him the things she knows about pulling too hard, about meaning well, about—

She says nothing. She hopes he won't get himself killed.

And then it's all she can do to worry about herself. South is equipped for the job, all misplaced rage and giant ordnance, and holy shit does Tex ever know that kind of feeling, but North wades into the fray, radiating an air of calm confidence, and she wonders whether he's given up Theta yet, wonders just what is fuelling the rage burning beneath his reassuring tone of voice. He buys her time to escape. She wonders if the twins will kill each other now or save it for some other day.

She runs. She runs into more trouble.

Getting crushed by a tank isn't high on her list of priorities for a reason, as it turns out, but the flip-flopping gravity makes it relatively easy to make a daring escape. She wheels around the ship, the familiar corridors made unusual, strange, by the shifting gravity. That seems good, that seems right. Nothing about this place should feel like home anymore.

She finds Carolina, wonders if York found her first. If he did, his sweet-talking didn't phase her, because she's angry, she comes at Tex with the familiar strength and force and will. To her credit, she's still got Iota and Eta on board, she's managed to keep hold of that much, but even with their enhancements, she's not quite strong enough, not quite _enough_ to win. Tex fights, but it's a necessity, a means to an end. A distasteful, uncomfortable reunion.

They tumble into Ops with its massive observation window, and Tex mentally rescinds her earlier critique of York's distraction-making skills: it looks like the _Mother of Invention_ is actually plummeting toward the planet below, in something that's just short of a controlled descent. Her mind is racing, and she knows, she _knows_ she can access Alpha from here, she's so close to her goal, so close.

For a moment, Tex thinks about trying to convince Carolina to come with her, but she's tired, she's so damn tired of this, and fighting is easier, fighting makes sense. She remembers back to Basic, to antigrav combat, to points of contact and gaining purchase and making use of momentum. Carolina's flagging, dodging back to catch her breath, and Tex tries, she tries one more time. "You can't win, Carolina. But you can come with me."

Carolina says nothing, confusion coming off her in waves, and Tex wonders if York tried the same approach. And then the ship is falling too fast, too fast, and there's no time to think, just the crushing slam of bulkheads against rocky, snowy outcrops, and Tex doesn't have a damn body to save anymore but still she curls tight around herself, trying to protect her head, sees Carolina doing the same, and for a strange moment she thinks she almost understands something, something incredibly important, something—

They crunch to a stop, far too soon, and then there's cold air streaming through the dents and gashes in Tex's armor. It feels real.

She stares up at the ceiling, then rolls to the side, gets her feet under her. Observation window's gone. Carolina's gone, too. She's alone.

It doesn't feel right, to pop up and start walking like she hasn't just come crashing out of the sky, but her body's relatively undamaged, and the access terminal is only a couple of steps away. She activates it, flickers into the interface smoothly, just another shadow passing through.

Alpha is standing in a room, something bright that puts her in mind of a cell. He's just another figure in blue armor, staring at the wall, but she knows him, she _knows_ him.

And now that he's in front of her, she doesn't have the first idea what to say. _Sorry they tortured you for so long. Sorry I didn't get you out sooner. Sorry—_

"Hey there," she says instead, and winces at her inane, cheerful tone of voice.

He starts a little, then turns slowly, sluggishly, to face her. "Oh. Uh. Hello."

His voice is different, she thinks. Younger. She gentles her own body language in response to his coiled-up tightness. He stares at her a moment longer, then asks, "Who are you?" like it's just slipped his mind, like it's really bugging him, like he knows he should know.

She exhales, because some part of her was always expecting this. "You don't know me?"

"Oh, sorry," he says, like he's having trouble focusing on her. "I'm just, I'm... tired. I'm really tired." He rallies, straightens up a little. "My name is, uh." He shakes his head as though to clear it. "It's, uh."

"Your name is Alpha," she chips in. "You're Church."

"Right," he says, vaguely. "Church, that's me. And you are...?"

She nearly laughs at the question. Answering that honestly could take a lifetime. "Let's just say we used to be together."

"Oh," he says. "Okay."

She remembers Carolina. She remembers York. She remembers Maine and Sigma and a ship full of angry people ready to kill her first and ask questions later. "I need you to come with me."

"Oh," he says again. "I don't think I can, but thanks. I-I think I'm just gonna stay here. Y'know. And rest."

There's a voice ringing in her head, something that sounds strangely like the echo of Omega, something she hasn't heard in a long, long time. _You knew this was how it was going to end. You just fooled yourself into thinking you could actually win, this time._

"You don't want to leave?"

"Ah, I... I don't think I can."

_You never win, Allison._

"Okay. Maybe just rest, then."

"Yeah. What... what was your name? Your name again?"

_You always leave. You never say goodbye._

"It's Texas."

"Texas? Like the state?"

"Yeah."

"Funny name for a girl."

_You never say goodbye._

"Yeah, well, Church is a pretty funny name for a guy."

"Yeah. I guess you're right."

"You gave me this name, y'know."

"I wonder why I did that."

_never say goodbye_

"Well... maybe if you think about it, it'll come to you."

"Yeah. Hey, I'm, I'm gonna rest now. But thanks for coming by."

"Okay. You rest. Church?"

"Yeah?"

"Goodbye."

He stares past her for a moment. "Huh," he says. "I dunno why, but... I hate goodbyes."

She sighs, long and slow. "Me too."

And it's good, she thinks. It's right. She won't be the one chasing ghosts. She tried, and she lost. She lost a long, long time ago, and now she's gonna keep trying and she's gonna keep losing, and that's just the way it's gotta be.

"Okay. See ya." He pauses. "Crazy... state-name lady."

She severs the connection, fades out. "Goodbye."

She stares down at the control interface for a while, tracing the memories, the failures running back and back, down and down into recursion. The wind is whistling through the shattered ship, and she looks up and over the icy wasteland.

There's a figure slumped in the snow, near the edge of an impossibly long drop, another figure moving toward it with purpose, and she explodes into motion, because no, not her, not her too—

Carolina is sprawled on the ground, struggling to get to her feet. Maine is moving calmly, with assurance, apparently uninjured in the crash. Tex leaps a pile of rubble, wishes for Carolina's armor enhancement, needs to move faster, faster.

Maine drops his weapon, speeds his pace, picks Carolina up by the throat, tears off her helmet, and Tex can't move fast enough, she can't move fast enough—

(_a small girl with red hair and green eyes staring up at her, reaching, always reaching, and she turns away. she always turns away_.)

Carolina screams when Maine rips the AI interfaces from the back of her neck. There's blood in the snow. Her body goes limp, and he drops her almost casually from the edge of the cliff, and Tex is screaming too, now, "No," and it's too small and she's too slow and she's always going to lose, always, always.

Carolina falls.

Tex turns, sees the Director and the Counselor watching from the ship's shattered cockpit, surrounded by guards, surrounded by men in uniform. She turns back, sees Maine install Carolina's AI interfaces, adding them to his own, watches him slowly replace his helmet, watches him hunch his shoulders in a paroxysm of agony. And then Maine is gone and something else straightens in his place, clenches his hands into fists, growls softly, barely audible over the raging wind. Two hands and a voice and will.

Tex cuts and runs, a frantic, undignified sprint across the snow, skidding and sliding, reaching out to catch herself, propelling herself forward, forward, forward toward the cover of the rocks, because nothing matters now, nothing matters but moving forward, nothing matters but moving.

She runs for a very long time.

She stops running, eventually, skids to a halt and falls into the snow and thinks about recursion, about sinking down and down and down into infinity, about all the things that could've been different, about all the things that could've been.

She's still got Omega, she realizes, and laughs, tilting her head back against the snow, staring up at the too-bright stars. The one thing she's managed to salvage from this whole wreck of an operation: an AI fragment who wants her dead, who probably wants nothing more than to join up with whatever Maine's becoming.

_Well, sure_, a voice murmurs, somewhere in her backbrain. _If you want to be all depressing about it._

The voice isn't Omega, she thinks. Just another memory. Just another shadow.

"Okay, asshole," she says aloud, because who the hell is gonna judge her for talking to herself out here on the ice. "I lost everything. You tell me one fucking thing I got out of this. One fucking thing I found that'd make it all worthwhile."

_You lost Allison, but you found Tex_, the voice says, matter-of-factly. _You found someone you can be, someone who's not just the sum of someone else's memories. And I guess that's not half bad._

Tex exhales, watches the stars, tries to make them go blurry in her vision the way she used to do when she was a kid. Matches them up into constellations she doesn't know the names of. Gives them names.

_You gonna be okay?_

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, Church. I'm gonna be okay."

She pushes herself to her feet. Starts walking. Keeps walking, moving forward, forward. Doesn't look back. Two hands and a voice and a will.

The memory fades. She doesn't say goodbye.


End file.
